CES 2011: New gaming laptops galore from Acer, Asus, MSI, Toshiba

With Intel's Sandy Bridge rollout including a few Core i7 quad-core mobile processors, it was inevitable that a heavy dose of gaming laptops would be among the first portables announced using Intel's latest CPUs. Here are some heavy hitters from some heavy hitters in the notebook world.

With Intel's Sandy Bridge rollout including a few Core i7 quad-core mobile processors, it was inevitable that a heavy dose of gaming laptops would be among the first portables announced using Intel's latest CPUs. Here are some heavy hitters from some heavy hitters in the notebook world.

While the following systems all feature Intel inside, when it comes to their graphics, things start to fragment. For instance, Acer's new 8950G-9839 uses AMD's new Mobility Radeon HD 6850, which it pairs with a Core i7-2630QM, 8GB of RAM, 750GB hard drive, and 18.4-inch LED-backlit display. Similarly, the Toshiba Qosmio X505 (pictured above) offers the i7-2630QM and 18.4-inch screen, but chooses Nvidia GeForce GTX 460M graphics. (It's also available with a Core i5-2410M processor.) Toshiba offers this Qosmio line from between $1,300 and $1,900, while the Acer costs $1,599.99.

Asus has also built its latest gaming laptop around the GTX 460M card (and Core i7-2630QM), but the G73SW-A is slightly smaller with "just" a 17.3-inch LCD. It comes with 8GB of RAM, backlit keyboard, and up to a pair of 500GB "hybrid" hard drives (which include 4GB of flash memory to speed up boot times). This "Republic of Gamers" notebook will be available next month starting at $1,849. Finally, MSI is rolling out its GT780 (pictured above) with either the GTX 460M (according to the company's press release) or the brand-new GTX 560M (according to Fudzilla). Like the Asus, this gamer comes with a 17.3-inch screen, room for two hard drives or solid state drives, and LED-backlit keyboard tweaked for gaming by peripheral maker SteelSeries. It also possesses MSI's Cooler Boost cooling technology, which users can access via a hot key on the keyboard -- though there are few details about what makes the technology unique. No pricing or availability has been announced for the GT780.